​Stories from PBL Path

By: Erin Sanchez​Thanksgiving can be a precarious holiday for Place Based Learning. I’ve conducted a number of workshops across the country where primary teachers wanted to take the Indians and pilgrims coloring sheets they had been assigning for years and turn them into a “project,” replete with kids in black and white and feathered headbands. How do we tell well-intentioned teachers that what they are doing is dangerous and aggravates historical traumas? How do we keep traditions without telling our children lies?

This year my daughter started kindergarten. We got through Columbus Day unscathed with nary a mention of the homicidal opportunist, but last week a letter came home announcing a Thanksgiving play, in which my daughter had a part and a line to memorize. She would be “Native American #2” and say something about the pilgrims’ hard winter. It was autumn of her first year of school and I was about to become THAT parent.

​After agonizing over the email to the principal and teacher (in which I pointed out the troubling irony of the only Latina girl in class playing the Indian), I got the most appropriate response and resolution I could hope for. Instead of perpetuating the myth of a peaceful, uncomplicated event that scholars and tribal historians agree happened very differently, the school chose to cull the universal themes of sharing, respect and community-building, hosting a gathering where songs and stories of giving thanks, from the many cultures represented in class, will be shared.

Place Based Learning, at its core, is about connecting – to one another, to our environment, to ourselves – in the most authentic and curious voice we have. When we think about ideas for projects we want to explore with our students, do we begin by asking, “Whose voice hasn’t been heard? Whose story hasn’t been told? How does this place speak to us?” Even with complex historical events like Thanksgiving, allowing students to grapple with ambiguous questions gives rise to the possibility of a new generation of ideas, more creative than anything we’ve imagined. Whether it’s celebrating intercultural themes in kindergarten or high school seniors grappling with systemic racism, we all have a responsibility to be THAT parent/teacher/child/leader and shape our little place in the universe.